Misfit Youth
by Neveramore
Summary: Melanie Spinos arrives in town with a chip on her shoulder, and is swept up in the academy's unique brand of drama. Will she survive  the chaos that is Bullworth Academy?
1. You've Got Your Hand on the Button Now

**Prologue: 11:58 p.m-****March 15th, 2008 (Present)**

The booming call of the clock in town square signaled midnight. I hadn't realized it'd been an hour since curfew, and I nervously flicked my cigarette, stalling. I had forgotten to smoke as I dallied, and the cigarette had burned down to the filter while I stood shakily fingering it. The smoke took on a new acridity as I gave one last, futile puff, before flicking it into the bushes that regally abutted the entrance to Bullworth Academy.

The smoke curled idly from the bush to mingle with the fat, wet flakes of snow blustering around the lamp posts that illuminated the darkened street. _Light, damnit. Come on._

The taste on my tongue was as bitter as the wind that whipped strands of hair into my mouth. I spat them out as I laughed. The bush wouldn't burn. The cosmos wouldn't be so merciful. It seemed that hoping for one, tiny, insignificant brush fire was useful to the extent of wishing for time to stop all together_- not fucking very._

The ugly gargoyle perched atop the gates watched over the happenings at Bullworth academy, and was only as pleasant as the students it oversaw. It gaped drolly at me, forked tongue protruding from its mouth. I scowled back. The middle finger of my right hand sprang from the confines of the fist that I'd clenched around my carton of cigarettes. I hoped that the gargoyle could sense the intensity of my hatred for it, despite my gesturing hand being snugly tucked into the pockets of my borrowed sweater.

Something about it just wasn't as gratifying as it once was. The gargoyle sat, unaffected, its stupid face still pulled into a grotesque smirk. _It's alright. No need to make an effort, asshole._

Despite my dislike of the thing, I knew as well as the gargoyle that I had little reason to be hanging around the front entrance. I already considered it reckless and stupid, and it began to seem downright ridiculous as the cold, searching beam of a prefect's flashlight was cut and thrown by the wrought iron bars of the gate.

I'd jumped instinctively into the ornamental bushes to the left of the gate as the beam of the prefect's flashlight swept across the lane in front of the entrance. I wasn't sure why I was so jumpy; if I was spotted, I'd have told him to rot in hell faster than he could have gotten off on his righteous sense of self importance. My usual indifference was useless, though, as frozen twigs jabbed into my knocking knees, which were clad only in a pair of questionably clean fishnets. A hole was torn through them in the back, and road rash made the back of my thigh sore and itchy as it healed. My ankles were spared from the assault by my oversized combat boots; though the hacked off shorts I wore did very little to shield me from the unseasonable snowfall.

I splayed my limbs against the cold brick of the wall, steadying myself as my heart rate slowed. My startled leap into the bushes had drawn the attention of one flashlight wielding prefect, and the accusatory beam wavered uncertainly on the pavement just outside of the gates. I muttered something about fascism under my breath, and leaned forward to figure out which prefect it was, assessing the danger level in the unlikely event that I was apprehended. "_Damage control,_" I thought wryly. The snowfall had been steadily picking up, though, and it obscured the features of the hulking prefect. Not that any of that mattered much, anyway. They were all huge, and each of them was a psychopath. It provided them with a strange ambiguity- a threatening one, at that.

Suddenly, familiar car rattled around the bend. Its tires banged across a manhole cover that steamed in the sudden cold that had gripped the town. The conic rays emitted from the headlights missed me by inches, and I went mercifully unnoticed by the driver. I didn't know how I would've reacted if he'd seen me. Maybe he'd been searching for me, and maybe some part of me felt guilty- though honestly, the relief that he hadn't seen me was almost sweet. I had to resist pulling another cigarette out of the squashed carton that seemed to become even more compressed with my mounting stress.

As I watched the tail lights of the car shrink into the distance, the world became utterly silent. I could almost hear the soft plop of heavy snowflakes hitting the pavement. My breath swirled out of my lungs in bursts, and the area around my neck had grown warm with panic. It funneled updrafts of heated air from my torso to my face, and I caught strands of the scent from the pilfered sweatshirt I wore. I lifted my tobacco- stained fingers to my lips to chew a hangnail on my thumb, inhaling the smell on my hand to cover the scent coming from the fabric. The gargoyle looked knowingly down at me. I glared back at it, and stepped determinedly out of the bushes after scanning around once more for any observers.

They'd padlocked the gates hours ago. By now, they'd learned to stop calling for Melanie Spinos at bed check. The first few incidents had been a necessary precaution, and so born was the vague, unspoken agreement between Mrs. Peabody and I; if I showed up to class often enough that Crabblesnitch didn't catch on to my tendency toward wandering "god knows where, at all hours of the night," she had no reason- or want, it seemed- to bother with me at all. Most of the time I counted it among the few silver linings to be had in this cesspool, but tonight, (the ides of March, in fact,) it meant little more than having to take the long way around to the girl's dormitory.

And somehow, I couldn't make myself move. My heavy sweater was soaked at the shoulders, and I reasoned that, if I kept moving, I'd dry off. With this dwindling determination fueling me, I geared myself up to start my second hike of the night. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_.

I watched the prefect's beam, counting the seconds in between his paces, and bolted across the gate and down the opposite sidewalk, on my way to the back parking lot. I'd managed to go unseen. Relief made me a little giddy.

I pondered my idiocy as I struggled through the darkness. At first I'd stopped in front of the gate only to catch my breath, and then I lingered. I told myself I'd have a smoke and continue on, though there I stood, and still, I'd been lingering. That led to gesturing obscenely at the gargoyle. I laughed sourly again. _I'm an idiot_.

Why, why had I come back? Or rather, why had I left? My logic failed me. Each of my evasive excuses seemed paltrier than the last, and _stupid_. Goddamned _stupid_.

"_You'll get caught,"_ I'd wheedled. "_Are you hungry? Not now, but you don't have money and you know you will be later. Just go back. Just go. This'll be the big one if you get nailed, Spinos. Go back."_

The truth poked pinholes through all of my increasingly weak excuses. All of the bullshitting in the world couldn't make me care about another detention, or one missed breakfast. The explanations I'd been running through in my mind were the very excuses I'd be providing Gary.

Gary. I'd almost managed to let him slip my mind. But he was always there, always at the back, no matter how I tried to ignore him.

I tucked my face into the sweater in spite of myself, breathing deeply. It smelled musky and sweet; like and sweat and dirt and grass. It was a scent I found that I intensely enjoyed. It smelled like its owner. I knew I'd have to get rid of it before morning, but for now, I wrapped the overly- long sleeves around myself like a straitjacket. The scent overwhelmed me. It blocked out the cold, and I closed my eyes as I trudged the familiar path on autopilot, tried to ignore the sting of the scrape on the back of my leg, and remembered my first journey- and perhaps the most important. The one that had brought me to Bullworth.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I've had this idea floating around for a while. I'm fully aware that this fic is a little more of this as a disclaimer, because I didn't stick entirely to the canon of the game (which, while wonderful, didn't fit the story in my head.) I grew up loving the game, and being fascinated by the world of Bully and the characters in it. Although I tried to incorporate some of the angsty-teen-drama-and-tongue-in-cheek-Rockstar-goodness that you'd expect from Bully fan fiction, it's got a bit of an edge to it.**

**As for the technicalities of this story: I jump around a lot. There are a lot of flashbacks, and things happen out of order. Melanie might be best friends with someone in one chapter, and have never met them in the next. The story happens in the space of one school year, and I'm adding dates, times and locations. Hopefully it'll make it a little easier to understand. If you have questions as to the chronology of the story; it'll probably be explained if you backtrack a little. I think most of the story is pretty straightforward and easily understood; but this is my first time writing in this style, so there may be a few hang ups along the way.**

**Lastly: I know that 2/3 of Bully OC's are new girls (or boys) who end up with Gary. He's definitely a bicycle- a lovely, sociopathic one, but a bicycle nonetheless. I tried to write Melanie as being an actually human being, instead of the Mary-Sues you usually get in this sect of Bully fandom, but the plot of this story is such a cliche for this fandom that it kind of hurts to think about it. It's also a "slow building" romance, so there's like, um, plot before the graphic stuff. Gimme a chance, here.**

**Thanks for reading this whole stupidly long thing, if you did. I could probably subsist solely on reviews if I tried, so keep that in mind if humanitarianism is your bag.**

**Disclaimer: **The title of this chapter is a lyric to the song, "When I'm Small" by Phantogram. I don't own it. I** own absolutely no part of Bully, but I do own my OC. I write for my personal enjoyment.**


	2. Gold Teeth and a Curse For This Town

**8:17 p.m.- September 7th, 2007**

I'd been on the bus for hours, and I was beginning to doubt my choice of seating. Being away from the other few sweaty passengers and their shrieking children had seemed to me the obvious choice, even at the price of sitting near the bathroom. But the bus rocked on rickety axles, and the contents of the septic tank sloshed and frothed in the broiling heat that the pavement below had absorbed from the glowing sun.

The poor bus driver had been recently emasculated by one very fat woman whose child had yanked the emergency break. It hadn't fully deployed, though the bus it had given sickening lurch. The had boy tumbled backward from the inertia of the sudden brake. He laughed maniacally, earning the frustrated outcry from the bus driver.

Cars screeched and blared around the us, narrowly missing the temporary roadblock that the bus had become. The woman had whipped her seatbelt from one of the many folds of fat on her stomach as she stood. I vaguely wondered how she'd been impregnated in the first place; or if she'd snatched the boy from his real parents and replaced him with a changeling before he was old enough to register that this walking heart-attack of a woman couldn't possibly be his mother.

"_What_ was that you said to _my_ son?" she spat. The kid in question rubbed at the snot caked under his nose and tugged on his mother's nightgown. She swatted at him.

"I… I asked…" The poor driver swallowed hard in lieu of repeating the phrase that had so angered the woman, perhaps wisely.

The woman nodded, approving of his answer. She cocked her fat head to the side, scanning the bus menacingly. I was quietly embarrassed for the driver, and wanted to provide him with as much dignity as he could reclaim from this bus-full of gawking passengers by paying him the least amount of attention possible. My mother had tucked an expired box of raisins into my knapsack as an afterthought, though I think we'd both acknowledged that there was no chance I'd be eating them. I had been feeding them to a hole torn into the side of the aluminum shell of the bus, then trying to peer out the window in time to see my mother's good intentions bouncing across the shimmering pavement.

The bus shook as the woman squeezed back into her seat, and once again, we were off. Her child continued to shriek. The bus driver turned the radio volume up a notch every time the child squealed, silently rejoicing in his small rebellion.

I recognized the smooth voice of Frank Sinatra. Not my favorite, but it would do in a pinch- and this definitely qualified as a pinch. My mind recessed into the sweet crooning of the radio, trying to recall the exact circumstances that'd landed me in this strange predicament.

)()(

My mother had chartered the godforsaken bus. She'd been tense during the ride to the bus station. I began to realize that it must have been due in part to the dire state of affairs the bus was in; though it had been because of the anger I was attempting to burn her alive with as we rolled through Motown.

The air conditioner was busted, and the windows were rolled all the way down in the humidity of the September morning. She hated driving in the city, and her jaw clenched and unclenched as she gripped the steering wheel precisely at 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock, and squeezed until her knuckles were white. She'd been watching me more often than the road, and my willfulness was battling hard with my screaming sense of self-preservation as she slid in and out of the bike lane.

I hadn't spoken a word to her the entire morning, and it was driving her crazy. I could almost see the fissures erupting along her skull and her self control leaking out of her ears.

She eyed me, and bit her lip as her the broiling heat of the car melted away the last of her resolve.

"You haven't said a word to me since yesterday." Her statement was backed by a chorus of car horns. She waved an apologetic hand out the window before she continued. "Cat got your tongue?" She laughed at herself to spite me.

"No." My angry answer had squelched out before I'd thought. I silently cursed myself. I'd broken, and she took it as an opening.

"Ah, so she speaks! I thought I was going to have to make a detour to Providence Hospital." Her infamous wit was only charming or funny when it wasn't directed at me. She'd always told me that her sharp tongue was the reason that my mysterious father had fallen for her. Sometimes I thought that it must have been why he'd left her, too. I heaved a sigh, and her eyes lit up at the prospect of an argument. I couldn't stop the rush that I felt, either. _Fuck it._

"A double admittance?"

"Oh-ho, clever girl!"

"I didn't get it from just anywhere."

"Snippy today." It was quiet for a few moments. I could feel her expanding, as if she would burst."You'll write?" She asked sardonically. Indulgently, even.

"What is it, fucking 1842? Maybe I'll call you when I get there." I wiggled my cellphone at her mockingly, and couldn't help the twinge of satisfaction when her mouth tightened at my vulgarity.

"What am I supposed to do Mel, actively participate in your anger? It's been weeks, and that maladjusted look on your face hasn't budged an inch. I'm not sure how, from a parental standpoint, you think I'd be okay with you roaming the streets for another entire year?" My stony silence had returned. "I'm beginning to think that this is going to be good for both of us." Her palms squeaked against the leather of the steering wheel as she angrily wrung her hands.

That one twinged a bit. I gripped my cellphone more tightly, and the keypad lit up, as if in protest. "Sure is, Eileen." She blanched when I used her first name, and stopped prodding after a less-than-parental huff. My anger smoldered as we rode in silence.

Eventually she stopped watching me. I slyly looked at her profile, tracing the familiar silhouette of her nose, mentally tweezing her bushy eyebrows; and for one fleeting moment, I almost felt bad.

Then the signs for the bus station started speeding by, and the wretched anger flared up in my chest again.

"Why are you shipping me off, again?" I goaded.

"It's one of the best schools in the country. At least, it was when I was there." She answered me curtly, neatly clipping the ends of each word in her rehearsed answer.

"Why am I going _now_?"

Her face darkened. "You know why."

And I _did_ know why. But I wanted to hear her say it. She bit her tongue, though. Possibly literally. My protest had been half-hearted, anyway. It wasn't that I didn't want to _go_. I was, in some base, cro-magnon portion of my brain, excited. It was something new; and something mysterious. I couldn't help being at least a little curious. That said, I didn't so much mind the _going_ as the _leaving_.

Silence lingered nastily in the stuffy car until we pulled into the bus station, and before I knew it, we'd exited the car and approached a bus that rattled and belched toxic exhaust fumes into the air. I stood facing her, a dufflebag in my hands and my knapsack strapped across my back.

The thing looked as if it were ready to fall apart. My mother, too, looked strangely fragile. She chewed at her fingernails, and smiled at me through her bad habit, despite my rudeness in the car. My mother was a woman of few vices, chewing her nails being the most prevalent- and one of the few similarities between us.

As I watched her, I realized that this was it. I wouldn't see her, or her nose, or her bad habits for close to a year. I acknowledged somewhere in the back of my mind that I'd miss her later, but every bit of sentimentality evaporated when the bus driver leaned down to speak at my mother.

"Hate to rush you folks along, but we're on a tight schedule here, and it's like to take a few minutes before she's up and running." He patted the dashboard affectionately. "Best to be on and ready a little ahead of time. I can take your ticket now, if you like." The man smiled cordially.

I turned back to my mother, who smiled and handed the ticket to the man, uncharacteristically silent.

"Well then," she sighed.

"Well." I answered.

She stepped forward to embrace me, catching me off guard. Her knees knocked into my dufflebag, and she reached around me awkwardly with one arm. Despite myself, I leaned into her neck. I sniffed her childishly, wanting to linger in the laundromat smell that clung to her blouse.

"Y'know, I might actually miss you." I laughed, even as I felt my eyes prickling with tears, and quickly pulled away. The gross, sad, guilt-trip mom was disappearing as quickly as she'd appeared. I felt a little more capable as she wiped a few tears from her own eyes. She straightened up and stepped back, appraising me. She nodded.

"Don't fight. Be good. You can do this. I love you." And strangely enough, I believed her, even as her voice trembled. She kissed her fingers and touched my forehead, then stepped away.

I got a little panicky as she stood back- she'd let me go, and was letting me go even now. She wasn't calling me back; she wasn't grabbing my bags from my hands and dragging me, pouting, to the car. She just looked at me, waiting in front of the humming bus, feeling small and very vulnerable. I stood there, shocked, and blinked at her a few times.

Then I turned to board the bus, and didn't look back.

I scouted out my ill- fated seat, shambling to the rear in a daze. I stowed my things in the overhead compartment, and sat down near a window. I sad fiddling with my phone as the front of the bus slowly filled with passengers, avoiding the teasing draw of the window. I could just see her out of the corner of my eye, and I wondered briefly if she could see me through the layer of dirt and insect viscera coating the window.

Apparently, the bus was in working order, and it lurched unceremoniously to life. Only then did I look back at my mother. She had turned to leave, and as her retreating form shrank, my view of the smoggy Detroit skyline widened.

)()(

And so I was seated in the speeding metal deathtrap, watching the reds and golds of the famed New England countryside burn a vomit like-streak into my periphery. When I bothered to watch, to truly see out of the window, there were water-color worthy panoramas framed there. Gullies painted with the colors of autumn; chromatic farmhouses; rolling fields dotted with portly, amiable looking cows; and the deep, endless lake that I'd never seen; that, to me, looked very like an ocean.

The scenery may have been nauseatingly picturesque; at that point, though, I was harboring a unique hatred for anything that would put so much distance between me and Detroit.

I tried to occupy myself with counting the mile-markers that lined the muddy, yellow highway; singing softly to myself, tapping my fingers to the tempo of songs on the radio; fiddling with my phone until it was almost out of charge- anything to distract from the stench seeping from the bathroom stall. It grew increasingly worse, and I soon forfeited.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and stood unsteadily on knees. The grimy coating on the window caused it to jam about halfway when I tried to open it. Sighing, I stuck my head, and then my arms, out of the small opening, letting the wind whip my hair away from my face.

I squinted into the horizon as evening sun beamed down onto my neck and shoulders. I could almost hear my mother's aggravated voice telling me to sit back down- I ignored it. I saw the driver looking at me pleadingly in one of his rearview mirrors; I ignored him too. I reasoned that we both sat in separate circles of hell on this bus- the radio relieved him of his; and the open air that deafened me and stung my eyes gave me reprieve from mine- especially since we hadn't seen a town- or a cop- for at least a few hours. He must have been thinking along the same lines; and even if he wasn't, he gave a nod and waved his hand at me resignedly anyway.

I was growing tired, but there was no complex in my mind that would let me relax enough for sleep. Every portion of my brain was buzzing at least dully as I searched the dark highway for signs of proximity to the school. It made me nervous, due to a combination of sleep deprivation and the eerily quiet dead zone that the front of the bus had devolved into.

I started restlessly picking at a hole in my jeans. The bus was steadily bowling down some nameless highway. The bus driver glanced at me sleepily, and smiled when we made eye contact.

I reasoned that if I knew where we were, I'd be more at ease. With most of the passengers asleep or uninterested, it would be easy enough to navigate to the front of the bus and ask the driver. I brought my head and shoulders back into the bus and slid out into the aisle.

The driver watched me hobble up to him, but I had to tap his shoulder for his attention once I reached him. I leaned down so that he could hear my question over the roaring of the engine.

"Are we there yet?" I asked, giving the man a small, weary smile.

He laughed a little. "We're about an hour outside of Liberty City."

"Really?"

"Really. We'll be there in about three hours." He said, yawning.

"Okay. I'll get some sleep. Don't pass out on us, buddy." I was only half joking.

"I'll try my best," He answered, and I would've sworn that I felt the bus swerve an inch or two.

I plopped back into my seat, suddenly exhausted. It had been dark for several hours now, and the passengers eventually conceded again to the slumber inspired by the velvety darkness just outside the bus.

As the night lessened the heat of the day, the stench from the toilets became- at most- bearable. My window was still open a crack, and I angled my face toward it, breathing deeply. The air had begun to taste salty. We were getting closer. I hadn't read the brochure my mother provided out of spite; though I vaguely remembered her mentioning the ocean. We'd made to the coast, at least. A sleepy, dreamy tune that I didn't recognize warbled from the speakers. That awful mother and her equally awful son had dozed, and she snored softly as we careened down the highway. Soon, my mind began to power down, and I drifted off to sleep too.

)()(

I woke to a chorus of screeching brakes that rose from somewhere beneath me. We'd stopped.

I'd contorted myself into a ball while I slept. My cheek was pressed to my knee, and it felt uncomfortably hot as I sat up and stretched.

It was still dark outside my window. "_He said three hours_..._"_ I thought. I groggily counted on my fingers. "_It must be nearly 2:00." _Two. What was I going to do here at two in the morning?

The passengers at the front of the bus had roused, as the bus driver put his radio to his lips with relish.

"We've reached our destination, ladies and gentlemen. Please exit the bus in an orderly fashion. Thank you."

I silently panicked when I detected no movement from the front of the bus.

I waited as long as I could manage, peering out of the window at the large wrought iron gates inscribed with "Bullworth Academy". This was really my stop then. I waited until the driver brought his radio to his lips to make one last call for my departure. I strapped myself into my knapsack and slid my luggage out of the overhead compartment. I banged up the aisle, forcing myself to move- the only plan I had to go on ended once I stepped out of those doors.

I reached the end of the aisle, pausing to ask the time.

"2:23. Have a nice _morning_, and _enjoy_ your stay in Bullworth." the driver cheerily intoned. I wanted to punch him. He seemed to sit imperiously upon his driver's seat, and pulled the handle that released the doors with gusto.

They swung wide, gaping menacingly at me. I swallowed, manically contemplating going back to my seat and trying to hitch a ride back home. Maybe even stop off at Liberty city. I laughed a dry, short laugh. The bus driver didn't look at me like I was crazy, as I had expected- he actually looked almost apologetic.

"Thanks." My mouth was sticky.

I was about to take the first step out of the door when something caught my ankle. My dufflebag went tumbling down the steps, and I went after it, painfully skidding to a stop on the sidewalk in front of the bus.

The snot- nosed boy stood at the top of the steps, smirking at me.

Before I could stop my reaction, I grabbed at the boy, who jumped back. I managed to snatch his untied tennis shoe off of his foot. I gripped the lace and whipped it around my head like a lasso, and chucked it down the darkened street with as much force as I could muster. He started bawling immediately, but as I turned to stare smugly into the boy's faced, the doors slammed shut and the bus pulled away from the curb.

I reveled in my small victory, for all of its childishness. I'd nearly throttled the kid. Somewhere between my annoyance and smugness, I found room to be relieved that I hadn't.

When I kneeled down to retrieve my dufflebag, I noticed two small but noticeably dark patches of blood staining the knees of my jeans. My palms stung, too. Damned kid.

I picked gravel out of my scrapes, and couldn't stop myself from feeling a little helpless. Was I supposed to knock at the gate? Maybe on the comically oversized padlock? This was ridiculous. All the time I'd spent on the bus was time that other students had spent in the school, orienting themselves with their classes, picking their lockers and avoiding one another. I found myself feeling angry at my mother; she'd never had a head for dates, and booking the tickets a day late had been an innocent enough mistake- but it had thrown a serious wrench in things for me.

A few frustrated tears managed squeaked out; I shook my head, the sudden force sobering. It was no use hating my mother from a thousand miles away, when it seemed that I'd been _padlocked _out of the school.

I looked around again, strategizing. There was a large, imposing building somewhere off in the distance, backlit by dimly burning lamp posts. There was a building that I could barely see over the brick half-wall that stood between me and the rest of the campus. The stately script over the doorway read, "BOYS DORM".

_"That's no use_." I was becoming more and more vexed by the moment. I peered at the impressively domed building directly opposite the Boy's Dorm, and wasn't disappointed- this time, it read, "GIRLS DORM". My relief was short lived, however, as I realized that I had no feasible way of getting over the fence.

I dropped my dufflebag in front of the gates, and walked down the sidewalk until there was a break. There was a short driveway that ran directly behind the girl's dorm. A smaller version of the main gate barred the pathway, but this one had a fatal flaw; there was a gap large enough for me to squeeze beneath. It was something that someone else may have overlooked; but I thrived on small details. I traversed the streets and rooftops of Detroit using openings and shortcuts just like this one- Something so easily over sighted by an untrained eye inspired ridiculous excitement in me. I quickly retrieved my duffle and jogged triumphantly to the bars, army crawling to salvation.

The girl's dorm was still visible over the maze of fences that barred me from it. I crept around the corner- and froze. A large and menacing someone stood sentinel in the center of the path between the girls and boys dormitories. He took large, strident steps, and wielded his flashlight like a weapon. I didn't need to convince myself to stay in the shadows- and out of this guy's sight. I clung, crouching, to the half wall that bordered the perimeter of the plaza in front of the main building.

The beam from the guard's light whipped around; he seemed to be progressing toward me. If I lingered, he'd walk right into me. I glanced at the shortcut again, and decided to take a chance.

I shoved my dufflebag through a gap in the chain- link fence that still barred me from the girl's dorm. The fence rattled, and the beam of the flashlight snapped up into the branches of the apple tree that shielded me from his sight.

It hovered there for a moment, before drifting back down. I began to carefully squeeze myself through the gap after my bag. I'd managed to get almost all the way through the opening- when my shoe snagged, and thumped onto the ground.

That certainly caught the guard's attention. I gave up trying to sneak my way through- and my shoe. I snatched up my duffle and ran unevenly toward the second break in the fence. The light flew around to where I'd been moments before, but all he'd be able to find was my lonely, solitary shoe.

I hopped down from the raised area and streaked to the front door of the girl's dorm. I almost began to cry with relief when I found it unlocked.

I shut it quickly and quietly behind me, and slumped to the floor. I sat there breathing for a few moments, unable to believe what I'd just gotten away with. My bare toes wiggled at me. Maybe it was karma for the shoe I'd taken from the boy; if so, the fates were cruel, indeed.

I slid my backpack over my shoulders, and dug my crumpled, stained schedule out of the front pocket. I got to my feet when I finally found what I'd been searching for. I was in room 14.

I stepped out into a spacious seating area. Everything seemed to be very, very pink. It was a little overwhelming. There was a white staircase, a fuchsia lounge area, and a hallway that only contained utility closets and a fire exit (the doors of which were painted a soft, feminine pink). No rooms down here. I crossed to the staircase on the other side of the room.

The door to room 14 was slightly ajar, and soft snores issued from within. A placard next to the door read, "BEARTICE T." I blinked again at the obviously misspelled name. My schedule hadn't said anything about a roommate. I slowly pushed the door open with my duffle, and tiptoed inside. Moonlight slanted in through the slats of some dusty aluminum shutters, revealing a neatly made bed that was separated from an occupied one by a nightstand.

I slowly walked around the empty bed, so as to avoid waking my new roommate. I slid my pack from my shoulder, and stowed my dufflebag under the dust ruffle of my new bed.

I kicked off my shoe, and sat on my new sheets with my knees tucked under my chin. I looked around my new room, and listened to Beartice snore. Other than her breathing, the dorms had an eerily still quality to them- as if we were the only occupants in the building.

The excitement I'd felt from the danger of sneaking around an unfamiliar campus was fading, and feelings of anxiety and loneliness dug away at my euphoria until I was nothing but a twitching heap of anticipation.

* * *

><p><strong>I've been editing the crap out of "Misfit Youth". Nothing about the story has changed, it's just sped up a lot. I don't think I should've published this when I did- it wasn't ready yet. Hopefully this will be the last re-configuration. Thanks for reading, and any extra reviews you find laying around.<strong>

**I've been thinking about adding a few shorter chapters written from the P.O.V.'s of the other main characters- Zoe, Gary, Petey. The story will still be centered around Melanie, and the other chapters would probably be in third person. Stupid? Genius? Let me know in a review, you non-existent reader you ;)**

**The title of this chapter is a lyric from "New Slang" by The Shins, which I do not own. **


	3. Day's Dawning, Skin's Crawling

**There's a few old parts mixed into this chapter, but the vast majority of it is new content. Everything in the next chapter is new, and set to be out next Monday. My friend let me put my hard drive into her computer and upload all of my chapter plans and fragments to the Doc Manager, so I'll be able to work on it from the site (!) I'm so relieved.**

**This chapter is super long. I wanted to get the whole first day of school thing over with, because I'm excited for what's coming :)**

**Contrary to popular belief, blindness and hairy palms are not side affects of leaving me a review.**

**The title of this chapter is a lyric from "Pure Morning" by Placebo. I don't own it, and it doesn't own me.**

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><p><strong>8:15 a.m.- September 8th, 2007<strong>

My roommate slouched over to the doorway.

"Aren't you coming?"

I shrugged my shoulders noncommittally, which seemed to push a button or two. I stood anyway, grabbed my backpack and followed her. Beatricerattled off a lecture about the dorm rules. _"…Chem free. That means no drugs, no alcohol, and that includes cigarettes. Curfew is 11:00, but Mrs. Peabody turns the lights out at …" _her books seemed to be cutting into her windpipe as she hugged them fiercely to her chest. She struck me as the kind of girl who might be able to use a little alcohol.

That thought marked the point in her spiel where I'd tuned out, recalling instead the strange night I'd had. The weirdness had only continued into the morning.

I'd sat on the bed, unmoving, for most of the night. I watched the sun rise over the boy's dormitory, which was decidedly less grand than the girl's. Everything looked different as I moved through the dormitory in the daylight. More intense, really. The light bounced off the walls, casting a fawny hue over everything. The rug had a rosy floral pattern that matched the bedspread, and the wood of the floor had a strong roan hue to it. It even _smelled_ pink, like gossip and bubblegum and hair product.

A beak of a woman had barged in and demanded to see my cellphone. I'd told her that I didn't have one, and sat down immediately, hoping intensely that she hadn't seen the shape of it through the fabric of my back pocket. She eyed me beadily, but eventually conceded to my lie. I asked Beatrice what it had been about- and she told me about the bucket of cellphone batteries on Mrs. Peabody's desk. Wasn't isolation a technique they used on Psychiatric patients in horror movies? I shuddered at the thought.

There were other girls milling around the dorm in various states of readiness. I got one, singular smile from one of the younger students; most of others gave me strange, sideways looks, or ignored me altogether. I was suddenly very conscious of my appearance; my shirt wasn't really helping- it was from some local metal band I'd snuck into the only reputable nightclub in Delray to see. The words were in some torn up, quasi-readable script fashioned out of intestines and teeth. The blood staining the knees of my jeans only added to the effect. I hadn't had much time to change- Beatrice had crept Golem-esquely into the bathroom and didn't emerge until slightly after 8:00, having transformed from Smeagol to Marsha Brady in just under fifteen minutes. Well, She was Marsha Brady if you didn't take her festering cold sores into account. Which I didn't. She tugged a pink ribbon around her hair and into place, then led me out of the dorm and across the plaza in front of the school.

All the self-consciousness I'd been experiencing was completely erased when we entered the strangely shabby entrance hall of the school. It was quiet. Beatrice's voice even faded momentarily, before picking right back up again.

"There are two class periods per day; they run from 9:00 to 11:30 and 12:30 through 3:00; with a lunch period between. The Prefects keep a pretty tight schedule. We only have five minutes passing time. Doctor Cr-"

"Did you say two periods… a day?" I asked skeptically. She sighed in exasperation before answering.

"Yes. Of course." She launched into her monologue again immediately afterward.

She'd looked at me like I was crazy. When I'd attended public school, I'd calculated the absolute minimum number of days required to pass my Freshmen year; and skipped the rest. Even with my shoddy attendance record, I knew the basic workings of the Amreican educatory system- at least, I thought I had.

We approached the main building. Beatrice kept her eyes down, a practice I was all too familiar with; I'd gotten through my Freshmen year of high school by watching my feet as I walked- but only barely. If I'd been given a nickel for every time I'd been harassed, robbed, beaten, demeaned, or bullied, I'd have been shaken down and relieved of one _weighty _sack of change.

But this was a _private_ school. The phrase had given the place some sort of prestige in my mind. It had sounded to me like a place where everyone was so busy sampling caviar and clamping their teeth together when they spoke that bullying just fell by the wayside.

I realized quickly, however, that this was not the case. Beatrice seemed nervous as we crossed hall, and stopped speaking completely when one of the formidably dressed and muscled flashlight guys from last night stared her- and me, too, I suppose- down. I stared into his bespectacled eyes, hoping that he wouldn't recognize me. He squinted, and I thought I was done for, but the moment passed, and he continued on to harass another student- this time, it was a small girl with dark skin and glasses- the one who had smiled at me in the dormitories.

"Is that… that can't be a student. Is it?" I asked her skeptically.

"That's a prefect," She was nearly whispering as she clutched her books. "Sometimes, they'll fail back purposely to _stay _prefects." Her face scrunched up in disgust, as if there were no higher offense.

A group of polo-clad students had gathered in the center of the hall, harassing a ginger-headed, overweight student. One slapped his books out of his hands, distracting him, while another taped a sign that read, "Kick me", to his back. They pushed him to the floor, and I felt the reverberations through the marble.

Beatrice gave a loud, wordless yelp at the group of boys. She covered her mouth, and her eyes widened. She was as shocked at herself as I was.

They turned to see who'd made the offending noise. Beatrice had her hands clamped tightly over her mouth, and her books had dropped to the floor. To me, she was the obvious suspect, but all of their eyes seemed to be on me- including Beatrice's, the traitor.

I laughed nervously as the polo-ed gentleman began to make their way over to me. Beatrice skirted out of the picture, and I saw her run to the aid of the ginger kid, who, to my both my disgust and pity, had pissed himself.

A large, pockmarked blonde kid blocked my view of Beatrice.

"Look what we've got here. The new girl. Nice shirt."

He plucked the hem of my top, and looked at his friends from over his shoulder to confirm that, yes, his shitty jest had indeed been intended to illicit laughter. I kept my mouth shut.

"You got a thing for gingers? Or maybe it's just the piss- stain." I had to clench my jaw shut, and somehow, I managed to keep quiet. That was one of the best lessons I'd learned thus far in my school career. It had about a fifty percent success rate; and that figure was mostly based off of how well I could manage my own reaction. As the four of them leered at me, I was seriously reconsidering those calculations. I wasn't delusional- I'd have lost the fight in a heartbeat. I was less than a quarter the mass of the offending group. But I was three times as fucking angry.

I closed my eyes, and concentrated on taking slow, even breaths through my nose.

"Look at her. She's falling asleep on you, Trent!"

_Trent's_ three companions guffawed. The only voice I didn't detect was the blonde kid's.

He forced a late snigger in a weak attempt at saving face.

"Then we'll have to wake her up, won't we?" I felt his sweaty fingers tapping my cheek, then gripping either side of my face, squeezing, and shaking my head from side to side.

That was it. I opened my eyes to his smirking face, and put my hands on his shoulders. My knee connected with his groin. He doubled over in pain, and the stupid smirks had hardly faded from the rest of their faces before I'd spat at another kid.

Another kid, a brunette with a big nose, gripped my upper arms and slammed me into the door. My head smacked against the wood, and he snorted through is snout.

He pulled me away from the door, putting me into a headlock and trying to wrestle my backpack away. I clawed at him, but my nails were too stubby to be effective. I was ready to sink my teeth into his arm, when I, and my attacker, were thrown to the ground.

I pushed myself away from the kid. A prefect sat astride the one who'd had me in a headlock, and the other three, including the freshly recuperated blond kid, took off in the opposite direction.

Beatrice had returned, and she knelt down in front of me.

"Are you alright? Your bag ripped." She held up my backpack- one of the seams had been torn, and I saw the corner of a book peeking through. Had she _not_ just seen what had happened?

"Are you fucking batshit? Of course I'm not alright. What the hell was that, anyway?"

"Algie is okay," she continued, to my utter amazement. She'd offered me to the wolves, and she didn't even have the decency to deny it?

"he's gone to the infirm-"

"Did you just see that?" I asked, looking her dead in the eye, disbelieving.

"Well, they were all crowded around you. It all happened really fast, and I was with Algie…"

I realized, somewhere through my distress, that she was right. It couldn't have been more than a minute, but it'd felt like forever. I looked around the hall- nobody had even stopped to look.

"And I thought that maybe they were just giving you a hard time. It happens pretty often."

The prefect had pulled the kid up by his shirt. He was now sporting a black eye that I'd had nothing to do with. The kid was gesturing to me, and pointing in the direction that his friends had taken off in, but the prefect was undeterred.

"Are you sure you're okay?" She asked again.

"I never said I was. I think I have a concussion." I rubbed the back of my head as I stood.

"Don't fall asleep," She suggested. "The office is right up these stairs."

"I'll try to make it. Thanks." I snatched my arm from her when she tried to help me up, and pondered asking for the infirmary. That Algie kid had gone for much less than I would be. She hurried ahead, though. "_Fuck it_." I whispered under my breath. I continued to rub the back of my head as I followed her.

The stairs seemed to swim as Beatrice and I mounted them. I clutched my ruined bag to my chest, holding it upside down to keep its contents inside. I tried not to peer into the faces of the students that surged forth like cattle at the call of the bell as I struggled through to the office. I could hear them shouting and moving around me. I could even smell one or two of them when they got close enough, much to my displeasure. I pushed through against the current with my head down.

We stopped outside of the office. "I'll wait right here, okay?" Beatrice pointed at the ground, indicating exactly where she'd be waiting.

"Right-o." I turned to enter the office.

"Melanie?"

"What?"

"Right here." She pointed again.

I stared at her for a few seconds before answering.

"...Yep."

"Alright."

"Cool."

"Okay."

When I finally made it through the arch to the office, it was as if I'd entered a totally different dimension. There was a strange, tense hush that fell over everything, as if the dark, rich color of the wooden floor and paneling absorbed sound. This was the last stop before detention or worse, for most students, and the walls took in their despair and trepidation as effectively as the sound from their mindless hallway chatter.

The kid who had assaulted me was slouched in a chair against the wall, cupping his eye and wincing. He sneered at me with his available one, but kept silent. There was some strange, threatening sanctity in the office, and I held my tongue, even if I couldn't deny myself a bit of a glare.

I clutched my backpack closer to my chest and made eye contact with a tall, forbidding woman that stood directly in front of me with her hands folded at her waist. Her hair was stiff and oddly shiny.

"Can I help you, miss?" Her face pinched grimly as she looked down at me, taking in my less than uniform appearance. She matched the air and décor of the office very well. Her eyes made my skin crawl, and spurred me to indulge one of my more basic instincts- which was telling me to get out of there, as quickly and efficiently as possible.

"Um… yeah. It's my first day. I was promised clothing and commissary? If you could point me in the right direction…" I was already backing toward the exit.

"Oh, how very amusing. _Another_ comedian. How fortunate we are. Dr. Crabblesnitch will see you, and he won't tolerate your insolence as well as I have. This way- what was your name, child?" She spoke over her shoulder as she started around the desk.

Her condescending tone made everything so much worse.

"It's weird. I'm having trouble remembering." I turned to eye the kid behind me over my shoulder. He flipped me off.

"That is _quite_ enough." She stepped over to a dossier that was open on the desk, trailing the scrawl with a flawlessly polished red fingernail.

"Miss Melanie Spinos. Here all the way from Detroit? No _wonder_ you're a day late." Her brow quirked nastily. I heard the boy snicker behind me, and Beatrice titter somewhere further back. I wanted to shove the lady's nasal bone into her brain.

"Born and bred. And where did you say your hair was from?" This garnered an even louder snort from the kid. She tugged at the hem of her blazer with one hand and patted at her head with the other, which was sort of impressive. She continued to glare holes into my forehead, despite my approval.

"Silence, Mr. Skrant!" She snapped over my shoulder. He jumped, the smile sliding off of his face to pool around his sneakers with the puddle of terror pee that I assumed had collected there. A vein bulged in her forehead. "_You_. This way." She stomped deeper into the office, and I followed, cringing inwardly. That last jibe had been satisfying, but a little _too_ effective.

The lady stopped outside a pair of ornately inlaid doors. She rested an ear to the wood, as if listening for a stage cue. I heard a throat clear somewhere behind the doors. She made a weird squeaking noise in the back of her throat and jumped backward, smoothing her blazer and patting her wig in an almost compulsive manner. She caressed the door handles as if taking the hands of a lover and slowly drew them open.

A stern, gray-haired man sat behind an impressively large desk. There was a single chair in the center of the room, and though it was obviously meant for me, the lady gave me a little push.

"Here's the arrival from Detroit, Headmaster." She spoke quickly and harshly, avoiding my name; though she simpered when she asked, "Are you comfortable?" She wrung her hands at her waist like a schoolgirl.

"Quite. Thank you, Ms. Danvers." He didn't look at her as he spoke. She blushed at his dismissal, and backed out of the room with her head down. She had the grace to afford me a glare, and then the doors banged closed, leaving me face to face with this strange, severe man.

He flipped through the mess of papers that were scattered on his desk, only occasionally pausing to glance up at me.

"We had… several… _many_ new applicants this year. _They_ were all on time, Miss Spinos."

"Oh."

He tapped his lip with his pen, and the scribbled something that looked suspiciously like "UNRESPONSIVE" across the bottom of my file. I blinked at him.

"Your attendance record is less than exemplary, but you seem to test well. A valuable asset come standardized testing time."

"Glad to know I can be of service, your honor." I saluted him. I don't think he noticed.

"Spinos... That name sounds familiar. Your mother was a student here."

"Allegedly."

"She was always... Well, I remember her." He sighed long-windedly. "They've assigned you someone to escort you to class?"

"I think she assigned herself."

He turned almost all the way around to look at the crested clock behind his head. "Good, good." He paused, staring intently at the corner of his desk. Freaky. "Ms. Danvers will supply you with your uniform, and that will be all." I pushed the chair loudly across the floor as I stood to leave. He jumped at the noise, and looked startled at himself. He drifted over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. I squirmed away, but he pushed me back toward the door. I slammed the handle down and shoved them open just in time to avoid being squished.

Dr. Crabblesnitch glanced at his watch-less wrist as he spoke. "I have every faith that your time here in Bullworth will be fulfilling for both of us." I heard a pencil snap, and looked up to see Ms. Danver's eyes glaze over.

"Lydia." He snapped and pointed his fingers at my face insinuatingly before motioning for the kid with the black eye to follow him into his office. The kid cupped his eye and sourly complied. The doors closed firmly behind him, leaving me alone with wig-y.

She tapped her fingers on the partition. I thought I felt myself turning into stone as she held my gaze. I wasn't sure what I had done- when it hit me. "_Fufilling for both of us_." She was _jealous_. It had sounded benign enough to me. My nostrils flared and the corners of my mouth started to wobble violently toward laughter as she continued to stare at me. The tension only broke when she ducked behind the desk. She reappeared after some shuffling, shoving a parcel at me from across the counter. Her mouth was puckered and seemed to be compressing at an alarming rate. I wondered if she knew how black holes worked. I gingerly grabbed the parcel, and- for lack of a better phrase- skedaddled.

Beatrice trailed unnecessarily close to me as I proceeded toward the skirted stick-figure at the end of the hall. She chattered incessantly in my ear, and I relished a little too dearly the sound that the handicapped stall door made as it slammed. She continued to talk, though, and it echoed around the bathroom.

I dug the items out of their covering. There was a blue monogrammed t-shirt that hung to my knees and a skirt that came just below my buttocks. I didn't even try the shoes on; they were marked as sixes, and my feet were a firm eight-and-a-half. It wasn't like I needed any more proof, but Ms. Danvers was turning out to be one vindictive bitch.

I tore the shirt up the side and knotted it so that it hugged my waist, and tugged the skirt down as far as it would go. There wasn't much to do about the shoes, so I lovingly stuck my natty old keds back onto my sockless feet and wiggled my contented toes. They settled into the familiar grooves that'd been worn into the soles from my endless city roving. The treads on the bottom had been worn off, and they weren't ideal for climbing anymore (as I'd learned on several painful occasions), but the nostalgia attached was enough for me to keep them around.

"It's Breakfast time, now," Beatrice said when I pulled the door open. She was so close that her nose must have been touching the door before I came out.

"Lead the way." I hoped that it hadn't sounded too enthusiastic. I was sincerely starving.

As soon as we'd reached the door, two girls pushed their way into the bathroom, laughing raucously about something.

"_T-hen we heard her phone ringing. She was listening the whole time!_"

Their chortling faded as they took notice of Beatrice and I.

"Hey herp. How's that cancer cure coming?" A redhead asked, throwing her hip against the sink and pulling out a tube of lipstick.

"Leave her alone, Z," I saw the back of a brunette as she brushed past me and into the handicapped stall.

Her advice went unheeded. "Who's your friend?

Beatrice ducked her head and started for the door. I glared at the girl who was smirking back. She raised her eyebrows at me.

"Y'know, Bea, she's kind of cute." She stuck her tongue between her fingers, and I raised my middle one in in equally obscene gesture. My hunger trumped my pride by a very slim margin, and I bit my tongue. I glared at her a final time before following Beatrice out of the bathroom.

The lunch room was as busiest part of Bullworth I'd seen. Students gathered around the four long tables that lined the room. I made a beeline for the serving area, but stopped when I didn't hear Beatrice following.

"You coming?"

"Oh. Haha. Um, no." She looked confused and suspiciously sweaty.

"Why not?"

"I've got to go.. study. At the library! Yeah, I've got some friends waiting there. Oh, that reminds me!"

She stood back and cleared her throat solemnly, as if she were a doctor relaying a set of particularly unfortunate test results.

"Since you're new here, I was… Well, um, I wondered if maybe you would like to join me at the library after school? You could meet my friends, and I could help you with any homework you might have." She enunciated every word as if she'd weighed them all individually, and smiled again, pleased that she'd plucked up the courage to extend to me what she thought was a great kindness. The way that she'd posed her offer had been strangely earnest- and it made it all the more infuriating. I'd paused while considering her proposal, and her eyebrows drew together.

_Fuck it._

Strange how familiar that phrase was becoming.

"Sure," I blurted. "Heh. Ahem. Sounds like a plan." I smiled. I'm sure it looked as grotesquely as it felt.

Oh, good! I'll see you later, then!" She smiled more widely than I would've thought possible and was gone before I could even regret it.

I turned back to the bustling cafeteria. There were meaty looking Jock-types. They and the sickly nerds polarized the lunchroom; there were several neatly dressed students lounging at one of the middle tables, and a few leather jackets leaning rebelliously against the serving bar, creating a bottleneck in the line.

One table, though, was almost completely empty, save for one seat. I could tell that the kid was tall, even though he was sitting down- and skinny, to boot. He wore a pink dress shirt under his school cardigan. He would've been a prime target for easy insults, but the frenzy of the surrounding tables didn't seem to touch him. He peeled a banana contemplatively, and I felt myself gravitating toward the fruit basket nearest him.

I grabbed an orange, and rolled it around in my hands nervously. He smiled at me, and I pretended to scout out a seat.

"You must be new."

I feigned surprise. "Oh, hi. Yeah, I'm Melanie."

"I'm Pete Kowalski." He offered his hand, and I impulsively shook it. His fingers were kind of slimy from the banana.

I looked suggestively at the seat. He laughed a little.

"Do you want to sit down?"

"I would indeed like to sit down. Thanks for offering."

"No problem. Hey, are you alright?"

"What?" I dropped my orange.

"The- well, the fight."

"I didn't think anyone noticed that."

"I happened to be at my locker. It's got a great view."

"I see." I began to peel my orange. "I'm good. I think the other kid came out on the raw end, actually."

He nodded knowingly. ""Boys are guilty until proven innocent, here at Bullworth. They usually get the short end of the stick, in the way of punishment."

"That's shitty." He looked a little put off by the way I'd phrased it, but nodded tersely in agreement.

"How's your first day been, otherwise?"

"Oh, a gas." He laughed at the correct moment. Talking to him was turning out to be easier than I'd predicted.

An unfamiliar, deep voice drew my attention away from Pete.

"Hey, _Peter_. Well _Someone_ had their growth spurt over the summer, didn't they? How's the Head?"

Another tall kid was making his way over to us. He had closely cropped brown hair. A scar over his right eye became apparent as he sauntered closer.

"Gary." Petey winced as the kid smacked the back of his head.

"Excuse me. I meant to say ask how _Head Boy_ was treating you. I must be regressing."

Gary sat down and grabbed Petey's banana. He pointed it at me.

"New girl." He smiled wickedly.

"Is that all anybody can say?" I plugged my mouthhole with a piece of orange before anything else stupid could fall out. The kid had a weirdly intense gaze. I almost choked on my orange slice when I swallowed.

"I wouldn't speak for these idiots." He crossed his arms, banana still in hand, and leaned closer.

"What about the nerds?" Petey laughed nervously.

Gary rolled his eyes. "_What, _Peter?"

"The- heh- the nerds aren't... um..."

"No, Petey, I suppose the nerds aren't technically dumb. Well, neither are you, but here we are."

"Is everyone here so self aware?" I snorted unattractively. Gary turned back to face me with his tongue in his cheek, a sarcastic laugh at his lips.

"You're quick. Didn't expect that. I saw you with Beatrice, didn't I?"

What a cock this kid was. Didn't _expect_ that? I was obviously speaking to the grand arbitrator of everything, now. My felt my hackles contracting.

"You saw Beatrice with me, yes." I countered his arrogant tone. "Why do you ask?"

"Did she ask you to go to the library with her after school, by any strange coincidence?"

"Erm... yeah. She did." This just kept getting weirder.

"Ah, the recruitments are starting early this year. She's going to try to introduce you to Ernest. Watch out for that kid's tentacles. They're abnormally far-reaching." He wiggled Petey's banana at me. The end broke off, and he threw the rest of it behind him. Petey harrumphed.

Gary stiffened, and I thought I felt another witticism coming- instead, he turned to watch the entrance of the cafeteria.

A stocky kid with shaggy blonde hair jogged through the arch. He wasn't wearing a school uniform, and one of the prefects eyed him from across the hall. If that wasn't strange enough, he seemed to be carrying a bloody parcel.

The kid passed through the rows of tables without so much as glancing at a the girl in a cheerleading uniform that was clearly batting her eyes at him as he passed, or answering the friendly cat-calls he received from the jackets against the serving bar.

"Hey, Ed!"

A hag of a woman transferred a lit cigarette from her fingers to her mouth as she stirred a pot. The kid tossed the seeping package through the service window and the woman caught it without so much as an upward glance. The kid smirked, then turned and jogged out of the cafeteria, narrowly missing Gary's discarded banana.

When I turned back to him, Gary's hands were on either side of his face, and I could barely detect humming. There was something like electricity rolling off of him.

I looked at Petey, who looked alarmed.

"That's Jimmy. Gary?" Petey asked nervously. He hesitantly reached out to touch him, but the bell cut him off.

Gary pushed away from the table so forcefully that it slid-with Petey and I still seated. Petey glanced apologetically up at me, and departed himself.

"See ya." I found a smile at the last moment and waved him out of the lunch room.

I finished my orange as the cafeteria slowly emptied, kept company only by the cook's hacking and my trailing thoughts.

I kept subconsciously checking for Beatrice out of the corner of my eye, and my legs were so firmly crossed beneath the table that I was afraid to stand up until I was completely alone. I heard the cook chopping something, and had to make myself think about German Shepards and Werther's Originals until the image of the blonde kid's bloody parcel stopped cycling through. I found a little room in the back of my mind to wonder about the future potency of the kid whose balls I'd kneed. Out of all the crazy shit that had happened in the passed twelve hours, though, I think it was the kid with the scar that was bothering me the most. _He hadn't even asked my name_. I shook my head. He'd _also_ almost exploded. _I have to get my priorities in order._ _  
><em>

I was so deep in thought when I stood to leave that I slipped on the banana. My scabby knees throbbed again, almost poetically.

And so began my first day at Bullworth Academy.


	4. All My Funny Friends

**A/N: All New Chapter! I promise :)**

**I got 99 problems but reviews ain't one. Donations are open, all the time, every day ;)**

**I got this chapter's title from "Ffunny Frends" by Unknown Mortal Orchestra. I doesn't belong to me, if you were wondering.**

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><p><strong>12:45 a.m.-March 16th<strong>**th****, 2008 (Present)**

According to the cracked screen on my scapegoat of a cellphone, it was nearly 1:00 when I finally reached the dorm.

It had taken me longer than usual to journey the familiar route. There hadn't been a prefect in sight, but I'd taken the shortcut out of habit; and when sliding over the second obstacle in my path, I'd snagged the long, deep scrape on the back of my thigh. I could tell it'd opened up again, and it smarted; but the stinging faded as I walked. I'd have to wait until morning when I could assess it in daylight.

I opened the side door to the girl's dorm as slowly as possible. I'd used my lip balm to lubricate the hinges a few weeks before, and I let out a figurative sigh of relief as the door silently swung open, creating a narrow gap that permitted me to inch my way into the dim, sickly pink of the main hallway. One could never be too careful when dealing with Mrs. Peabody- I wasn't sure where she stalked at night, but she'd caught me any number of times for things I would have never thought to consider; namely, that freaking squeaky door hinge.

I made sure the door was completely shut behind me, and then knelt down to pull off my muddy boots and shorts. This way, my baggy sweatshirt and naked knees could be mistaken for sleep attire by Mrs. Peabody- granted that she didn't notice that I was sopping wet and freezing cold, first. The fishnets stuck to my scrape and took a little more precision, but they soon followed, and I shoved the lot into the linen closet that seemed to exist solely for the stowage of my sundry contraband. I made a mental note to retrieve them the following day, though they were likely to stay put for at least a while. I had bigger fish to fry, at present.

I padded across the hall in nothing but the sweater and my underwear. My footsteps were muffled against the rosy carpet. I used my hands to drag myself up the stairs, like a dog. I stuck my tongue out and quietly panted, laughing at my own, unfunny joke.

I peered around the corner once I reached the top of the stairs. The coast was clear. I bolted, soundlessly, to room 14. The handle-less door and the smashed placard were both, in themselves, a comforting sight.

The hinges of this door had had the same lip- balm treatment as the side door. Even so, I couldn't help feeling a little paranoid as I entered my darkened dorm room. When was the last time sneaking around campus had gone off without a hitch? It had been a while. Nearly as long, in fact, as it had been since I'd slept in my own bed.

I tried to flip the light switch, but remembered all too suddenly that the bulb had been shattered. I used my phone as a light, and crept anxiously toward my messy bed, not wanting to jinx it. Who knew? Maybe someone had booby trapped something. Some far off, repressed portion of my tired mind chuckled at "booby", and I slipped off the sopping sweater and shoved it under the bed before succumbing to the beguiling draw of my warm, filthy sheets.

)()(

I woke with a start.

My sleep had been deep and dreamless, though I'd known as soon as I opened my eyes that something was awry.

I stumbled out of my bed, dragging the blanket with me, and made my way sleepily to the glaring window. The blinds had been in a dirty heap on the ground for months, and the light that filtered in through the grimy glass stabbed my corneas.

I saw the boy's dorm. It drew my eyes like a magnet whenever I looked out of my dorm window; it was nearly a strain not to try to peer into the third window from the left of the door.s I wouldn't have been very telling, anyway; there was little to no movement anywhere outside the building, save for the prefect that was making his rounds, but I couldn't help the draw it held for me.

I noticed the sun, next. The wet, thawing world had a golden hue to it, cast by the glowing orb that looked to hang in the very center of the sky.

I launched myself at the bed and began fumbling through my sheets, searching wildly for my cellphone. It was nearly dead, but had just enough juice left in it to ruin my day. It was a quarter passed noon. When I did manage to fall asleep for more than a few hours, I could usually wake myself up around 6:00. I hadn't slept through the night in some time.

It appeared that Mrs. Peabody had stopped checking my room entirely. Figured. It'd been at least a month since I'd slept here for more than a night at a time- my long absences must have been enough to wear down even her nosiness, the prying old hag.

I was late, nevertheless. That thought made the heavy, confusing memories of last night flee, only to be replaced by a slow, gross sinking feeling. Not only had I missed morning classes; I wouldn't be eating lunch, either.

My shoulders slumped. I felt defeated. I'd be hearing about this, for sure. I wanted to curl up and go back to sleep, forever. Instead, I made myself stare into the bright light that streamed through the window. I couldn't afford to skive off. If Crabblesnitch started poking around, Mrs. Peabody would never take her watery little eyes off of me again. At that cringe worthy thought, I crossed my room, propped a shoe against the door to keep it closed, and started the grueling process of pulling myself together.

Fifteen minutes later, after a hooker's bath and some careful pawing through the dirty clothes bin, I was nearly ready to go. I had to use my last, precious pair of clean socks, despairingly accepting the inevitable Laundromat run in my near future. I tried to whip wrinkles out of my school cardigan, to no avail; and I slipped my skirt gingerly over the tender scrape that ran down the back of my thigh.

I shoved my feet into my Keds, and then raced through the empty hallways and down the deserted staircases. I threw open the doors when I reached them. The grime that coated the window in my room had filtered the sun's rays; outside, the unadulterated, pure light almost blinded me, and the cold air teased goose bumps into my skin through the thin material of my sweater. I shielded my eyes and hugged myself, continuing on.

There were only a few stragglers present as I crossed the courtyard in front of the main building. I walked with my head down, counting my steps as I trudged on to my late class. _What is it? It's Wednesday. Must be Biology. That's it. It's fucking freezing out here. I'm so _hungry_._

I didn't notice the first red streak fly by me while my thoughts meandered, but the second threw me backward before I'd been able to register what was happening.

"_Zoe!"_

If I'd been watching us through someone else's eyes, I would have laughed. She'd tackled me, and we'd collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the steps.

Once we were properly disentangled, she punched me on the shoulder. I felt it bruising almost immediately.

"I'd ask why you're beating the shit out of me, but I don't think I'll appreciate the answer," I huffed, massaging my shoulder.

"Where were you last night? Or this morning? I saw you leave, but you never showed up." She sighed, finally catching her breath.

"I took a detour. Why aren't you at lunch?" I was trying to change the subject; I knew she wouldn't pry. Zoe wasn't like that. The girl could read me like a book, though, so misdirecting was the wisest discourse in this situation.

"I was looking for you." She eyed me suspiciously, but dropped the pursuit. "Well, you didn't miss anything really good, anyway. Carn got really drunk and dumped a Budweiser on his amp. It shorted and nearly killed him; half the set was them destroying the rest of their equipment. Then we all crashed at my place. It was pretty boring. What did you do? I saw that battle scar; you get in a fight without me or something?" She wiggled her fingers under my butt, and I slapped her hand away.

"It's a birthmark," I smirked.

"Oh, whatever. What class you got?" Her selective nosiness was one of her best traits, and I could have hugged her.

"Not yours. The bell's about to ring, huh?"

I heard the stomping before I saw its source. Edgar was lumbering over to us, and before she could answer, he'd grabbed Zoe by her upper arms, pulling her into a standing position.

"Aren't you supposed to be in class, Miss Taylor?"

"We're delinquents. That means we're supposed to skip class, right? Give us a break, huh?" I made a pig- nose at him.

He wrapped his entire, muscly, tattooed bicep around a squealing Zoe, restraining her. He used his free arm to point at me.

"Don't get me started on you, Spin."

I flipped him the bird, but he had become rapidly indisposed. Zoe slapped at him, squirming and giggling. He laughed his warm, booming laugh, and it looked like his lips covered the entire bottom half of her face when he kissed her. From the angle I sat at, I could see up her skirt, so I turned my head as she giggled like an idiot. Edgar threw her over his shoulder, and he called out to me as they retreated back into the building.

"You need an escort?" He asked, pointing at me again. His face was red from the exertion of holding Zoe.

"Nah, go ahead. Thanks anyway, reject." I waved over my shoulder. Zoe spoke rapidly, trying to get out whatever she was telling me before they made it through the door.

"See you later, Spin. Lola's gonna be at my place-"

The rest was lost to the sharp trill of the bell. They disappeared through the doorway, and I counted to ten before following.

Once I reached it, I popped my locker open and leaned my head into the cool metal environment that it provided. I thought I heard Zoe's echoing laugh somewhere behind me, and I turned to find her, but the hallway was empty.

I faced my locker and began to fiddle with my books, alphabetizing them, and then sorting them by color. My feet itched, subconsciously stimulated at the sound of the bell. They knew I should've been walking to class; but I stayed put. I flipped my books onto their spines and began arranging them by thickness.

There was a tiny part of me that almost _wanted_ to go to class. I wanted to do something that someone normal would do. I wanted to be like Angie, with her black hair that had been neatly plaited by her mother this morning. Maybe even Christy. She was vapid, but there was an inherent innocence about her. The only thoughts that were able to hold presence in her pleasant little mind were of a simple and stupid variety; lip gloss, panties, shitty pop music. Etcetera. I wasn't exactly sure what they thought about, but I knew that when other girls passed me in the hall, there wasn't anything _off_ about them.

I gave very little for my classmates to speculate about; even so, they could tell. The lack of information drove them crazy and threw up red flags all over the board. _What did that Spinos girl have to hide?_ They could smell it like a wasp smells fear, or a dog senses a storm. They knew I wasn't _normal_; that I wasn't like them.

I'd closed my eyes while I thought. I opened them to the sight of a prefect eyeing me from across the hall. I'd stopped trying to identify them- they seemed to operate under one, despotic disciplinary system of a mind anyway. Sighing, I snatched a book at random and angrily slammed my locker door, waving scornfully at him. He nodded, satisfied, as if he'd closed the damned thing telepathically. He turned, clicked his heels, and continued on his way.

I squeaked a little and had to cover my own mouth when I turned around. Gary had been waiting behind my open locker door, and eyed me amusedly now.

"I missed you last night," He said it in that tone- it registered near accusatory. This tone was his most dangerous.

He picked imaginary lint off of my shoulder.

"Did you have fun?"

"What?" My fingers and toes went numb.

"The gig. Any casualties?" I'd been so intent on remembering the excuses I'd rehearsed that his nonchalant question staggered me.

The gig. That was right. "Oh. Um, It was great. Some kid kicked the shit out of a bouncer, but other than that, it was very tame." The lie came smoothly to my lips. He didn't react, and my stomach churned.

"You're in a good mood," I said weakly, venturing a smile. He had a far-off look in his eye, but it cleared when I spoke. His lips curled into a patronizing sneer, a second too late. It was a second that I couldn't account for. I felt my fingers twitch.

"Aren't you observant?" He paused with his mouth open, as if to say something else. Instead, he wrapped an arm around my waist. The familiar thrill of his touch never failed, never changed. Excitement made my thoughts hazy.

There was altogether too much going on in my mind. Gary was there, holding me recklessly close, making my thoughts sluggish and warm.

Then there was panic. He began to trace the length of the scrape from last night, lingering at the top of my thigh. I swallowed at the dryness in my throat. He watched my face.

_"You may be observant, Spinos, but nothing gets past me."_

I felt like flinching when he brought his hand up to brush my hair behind my ear. He peered intensely into my eyes, and dragged his thumb across my lips. I bit it lightly, and something like arousal flinted in his eyes. It was our personal version of a white flag. I knew that it wasn't the end of it- I could tell he wanted details, despite his casual manner- but there was a tentative truce. The corner of his mouth pulled down in a familiar way, as if he was disappointed I'd conceded so quickly.

He pulled away from me dryly, his countenance changing from interrogative to business-like.

"You want to do something later?" He picked his fingernails uninterestedly. He was only glossing over the formalities. There was only one way for things to unfold, which was according to his plan. I don't think he'd even considered a negative response.

He continued to look at his hands, but I saw his eyebrow quirk when I paused. Various forms of "I'm busy" budged into aggressively my consideration, bit faded quickly when I heard his foot begin to tap. It sounded like someone else when I finally answered.

"Of course."

"I'll find you." He eyed me as he backed away. For some reason, his shrinking outline made memories of that first party flash through my mind. I watched him until the doors swung shut, taking my evening and my thoughts with him.


	5. The Choice is Yours, Don't Be Late

**2:40 p.m.- October 31st, 2007**

Blades of grass poked through my gym shirt and tickled my back. The sunlight burned through the skin of my eyelids, turning my world red.

The ground along the sides of the football field was damp; the sun was warm, though, so I didn't mind. I lay on my back with my ankles crossed somewhere below me, basking. The birds sang their trifling tunes, and Burton was far enough away that I could hear the breeze rustling through dry, dead leaves over his drill-sergeant impression. This weird, global-warming-Indian-summer deal made it possible for gym to be held outside mid- October, and nobody was bothering me. It seemed too ridiculously easy.

Even Mrs. McRae lounged on the bleachers, dozing with an open book over her face. At one point, I caught myself wondering if she'd had a stroke, but the pages of her book fluttered slightly as she snoozed. She was the elderly school nurse whom they'd hired to oversee girl's gym classes after Mr. Burton's disgrace. Over the past few weeks, Petey had been bringing me up to date on the state of the school during gym, so I was well informed on the subject of Burton's perversion. A quiet, cross-legged Petey sat next to me now, plucking grass from the ground.

The muggy day was perfect. It was just too good to be true. A meteor must have been hurtling toward us; that, or Eunice may have finally snapped- and we were the most stationary targets on the field. I chuckled at my morbidity.

"What're you laughing at?" Petey asked, smiling wearily.

"Is Eunice here today?"

"Yeah. It's Wednesday, so she was crying in English earlier. Why?"

"She didn't have a gun, did she?'

"Why would she have a gun?" He tossed a handful of grass at me.

"Because this is too wonderful." I sighed, lazily brushing the grass off of my chest. I was too relaxed even to retaliate.

"That doesn't make any sense." Pete laughed nervously. "It _is_ nice out here, though. Burton hasn't noticed us yet. He'll make us run like, _eighty_ laps when he does."

"No, he won't, Petey."

He got incredulous. "He will, he's done in it before."

I waved a hand in the direction from which Burton's shouts were issuing. "Well, then, go partake in the madness." I wasn't really concerned with Burton. I already had a credit in Physical Education; it'd wound up on my schedule by a fluke. I didn't bother having it corrected. The weather had been so nice that I'd just left it alone. I didn't know about Petey, though.

He heaved a jaded sigh and changed the subject. "Is your hair naturally blonde?" He reached over and rolled a strand between his fingers.

"Yeah. My mom has really dark hair, though. It's weird."

"What about your dad?"

"I wouldn't know. I've never met him." I rolled onto my side to look at his reaction. He seemed uncomfortable at my frankness.

"I'm sorry?" He said it like a question. I guess it made sense; he wouldn't have been able to glean anything from my ambivalent expression.

"Why?" I managed a short laugh, and rolled back over, covering my eyes. "It's not like _you_ know him or anything. Well, maybe you do. He's from Bullworth."

"Are you kidding me?" He sat on his knees at the new piece of gossip, and lowered his voice to indicate that he understood the cagey nature of what I'd just shared. "Really?" I'd already told him too much, but I felt that I could trust him with just a little more. It was Petey, after all.

"Truly. My mom went to school here, too, for a few years. Now I know why she's so fucked up."

He laughed. His brow quirked, but before he could pose is question, the world darkened.

I opened my eyes. There was Burton, in all of his middle- aged glory, blocking out the sun with is male patterned baldness and knee length socks.

"What is it that you think you're doing, Kowalski? Spinos? Get your lazy asses back out there and _jog_!"

He pointed menacingly at the field. I scoffed.

"Beat it, Burton. I don't even need this class."

"Me either," Petey chimed in. I was impressed; he was rarely rebellious, both by the virtue of being head boy and his natural timidity. I nodded, and continued.

"There's only fifteen minutes left, anyway."

"That may be so, you two, but that's fifteen minutes you'll spend sweating." I swear he licked his lips.

My stomach churned. I peered between his legs. Mrs. McRae was snoozing away on the bleachers. Fat lot of help she'd do me now. I sat up, and channeled my sweetest, most sickening simper of a voice as I said, "Well, Mr. B., we all know that the only reason you let us sit on the sidelines so long was because you were trying to see down my gym shorts. Maybe Petey's, too?"

He swallowed, and a sweat that had nothing to do with the heat broke out over his fat head.

"That's insubordination, Spinos-"

"Just leave it, Burton. You're needed elsewhere." I gestured to the field behind him, where Bucky Pasteur was being placed in a chokehold by an overly large jock.

He turned to glare at us, one, final time, and then jogged over to separate Bucky from his assailant. After he broke it up, he shoved both of them off of the field and gave them instructions to go to the principal's office. He then reared around to the rest of the class, shouting, "Twenty laps round' the field before the end of the period. GO!"

"Wait to go, Mel." Petey shortened my name affectionately. I liked it. It was something a friend would do. Had I finally found a friend in this place? Well, maybe, if I didn't count Beatrice; and somehow, for all of her effort, I didn't.

What a foreign concept friendship was. I'd never really had a friend- There were the regulars from the Downtown scene, my few childhood friends from across the river, and those I was forced to interact with at Southwestern- but I'd always gotten by with having acquaintances; rarely had I considered another human being a "friend".

Given; Petey was a bit of an introvert, and the head boy, so there were a few de facto limitations to our friendship. I think we'd both mentally agreed to keep our relationship restricted to gym class; him, because he already had a bit of a reputation- one that having a female best friend wouldn't help- me, because I was so candid by nature. It was hard for me to keep friendships very long, because it was hard for me to pretend to give a shit. Hard, but not impossible. Petey never had ulterior motives, and he rarely complained; and I respected him for it. I was the new girl, and still managed to hold an air of mystery even after a month at Bullworth. I think I was like a new canvas for him; a clean, white expanse that others could only attempt to paint with speculation and rumor. This weird dynamic seemed to be working out well for both of us.

My thoughts faded from pensive to borderline retarded when we made eye contact. I lost it. We exploded into peals of wild laughter, throwing our heads back theatrically.

I had just begun to regain my composure, when my head was snapped back and my chest felt as though it would collapse.

A football had been hurled at me as I sat, laughing with Petey. The gaggle of students that had been forced to run plodded in front of us, drained by the heat. A girl with hair too red to be anything but natural was there, sneering at me, as the rest of the students ran ahead of her. I recognized her instantly.

"What—the fuck?" I managed to splutter as I coughed.

"Femme-boy's finally found an in, huh? I didn't know we had any lesbians at Bullworth. What are you two going to name your Cambodian adoption baby?" She stuck her tongue between her middle and index finger. Must've been a trademark, or something. I noticed a tattoo on her hip that I hadn't noticed before. It was a fading pair of twin cherries. I didn't have a response- at that point, all I could do was cough and let my eyes water- so I channeled all of my rage and hatred into the image of the cherries as she turned and jogged to the head of the pack.

"You okay?" Petey asked, slapping my back.

"No. Who is that?"

"Zoe Taylor. I wouldn't try anything; she's got half the townies under her thumb."

"What is _with_ this shithole, Pete? I've taken far worse, _believe_ me, but… This is psychological warfare."

"Couldn't tell you. Maybe there's something in the water."

I gave a begrudging laugh as I threw the football uselessly after her. After _Zoe Taylor_. Even the voice in my head sneered as I thought her name. She was already halfway around the field again, and the football had landed about three yards away from where we sat.

I was seriously contemplating getting up and marching across the field to confront her when the bell rang.

"You want to hang out here, for a minute? I've got a ton of homework from Chem that I'm not looking forward to." I could tell that he was trying to keep me seated, so I wouldn't fucking murder that girl. That's what I meant about Petey. He was just a good guy. It didn't at all lessen my urge to rip _Zoe Taylor's_ stupid red head off of her shoulders, but I appreciated his effort.

"Yeah," I was fuming. I watched her mount the stairs, pointing at me as she and another girl laughed. She rolled her hips exaggeratedly as she walked to showcase her stupid tattoo. "We'd better wait a minute."

I hadn't seen her before, but as the last few stragglers cleared out, I noticed a tall, pretty girl with spit curls and a crop-top strolling slowly around the field. She was talking to the kid who insisted on perpetually wearing a leather jacket, even though it was suffocatingly humid out. She gave him a peck on the cheek, and he looked decidedly sweaty as he ran off of the field.

Then she was making her way over to us.

I wordlessly groaned as she approached.

"She's alright," Petey whispered as he poked my hip.

"Hiya, Petey," She smiled as she came to a stop a few feet in front of us. "Hey, new girl." She wiggled her fingers at me. She didn't seem hostile. I wiggled mine back. "Zoe sure reamed you good, huh?" She pointed at her chest.

"Yeah," I said, scratching my nose. I'd hoped the little scene had gone unnoticed. It had obviously been for naught.

"Anyways…. I'm meetin' up with Johnny, so I can't stay and chat, but I wanted to tell you about the Halloween party in the Vale. It's gonna be wild." She jumped a little and squealed as she said "wild". I bit my tongue until I thought my mind would bleed.

"Thanks, Lola. I'll think about it."

She began to back away. "Well, it's pretty easy to find, if you decide to come. It's at Parker Olglvie's house. Starts at 6:00. The kid's a nosebleed, but his 'rents is outta town for the whole weekend. It's still BYOB, though. What a drag, huh? Oh, and new girl: Zoe's gonna be there." She winked, smacked her gum, and then turned to chase after whom I could only assume had been Johnny.

I prayed that Petey couldn't detect my interest as I asked, "How do you know _her_?"

"She says I'm the only nerd who doesn't try to grope her in exchange for doing her English papers. She's one of those girls… well, she gets around. There was an all-out war over her last year. All the cliques had someone that'd slept with her. She's sort of steady with Johnny Vincent, but she's got the captain of the football team on the side, if you can believe that. She doesn't have many girlfriends, because of her reputation."

"What about Christy Martin?" Petey immediately understood, and nodded in acknowledgement. Christy Martin was always talking about sex. Well, she usually had her facts skewed, but that was pretty much all that came out of her mouth, and she seemed to be well endowed in the friends department. She was in room 12. I could hear her whinnying to younger, more impressionable girls across the hall from time to time.

"Well, I guess girls avoid Lola because she doesn't have the decency to pretend to care about other people's sex lives, or be ashamed of hers. She doesn't really have many male friends, either. Johnny's a pretty jealous guy. The only reason he hasn't tried to murder me is because he thinks I'm gay."

I could hardly be blamed for the derision with which I replied, "Well, she must think _very_ highly of you. She even reminded you to bring your _own_ booze. She must have forgotten that you were head boy, because I know that Pete Kowalski would always- _always_- do the honorable thing, and stop this hotbed of under-age drinking and copulation in its tracks."

He rolled his eyes. "I wasn't always head boy, you know."

"Really? I thought it was a cradle to grave thing, like being the King of England, or a Supreme Court Justice. That's probably the only reason they haven't assassinated you, yet."

He laughed. "Probably. Are you going to that party?"

"Of course I am. I have to defend our honor, don't I, femme-boy?" This earned me another fistful of grass. Some of it went down my shirt, and I scratched at my chest.

"I don't need your help, you know. I can fend for myself." He seemed sincerely offended.

I felt a little guilty. "I know, Pete, but you're the one with the invite, amigo."

He eyed me sideways. "I suppose you're dragging me along with you, then?"

I grinned, and he didn't seem entirely resistant as he said, "Well, we better get dressed, then. It's already 4:00."

"Meet you in front of the boy's dorm?"

He nodded, waved, and departed. I stood and brushed myself off, mentally choosing my costume, then questioning my improvisational skills at the thought of my pitifully bare wardrobe. I wasn't exactly thrilled about attending some snob's party, but Zoe Taylor didn't know what was coming to her, and I was excited in spite of my dismal expectations.

* * *

><p><strong>I'm probably putting updates too close together, but I had a lot of chapters saved up on my computer.<strong>

**There was also a little note to myself in the middle of the chapter that I forgot to delete. I have a very hectic writing style, so if I mean to come back to something later, I write something ridiculous so that I know to change it during proofreading. Sorry if it disrupted the flow of things, but it's fixed, so all is well. **

**Leave me or a review, or I will take your mother out to a nice seafood dinner and never call her back. **

**The title of this chapter is a quote from as song by the great poet: "Come As You Are" by Nirvana. I don't own it, or Bully, or anything cool for that matter. **


	6. This is Why Events Unnerve Me

**Hello, all. I know I've been down and out for a while. Here's a teaser of next chapter (mostly just because I feel like such a monumental pile of shit for leaving my fics go so long). So… Pity chapter. Yay!**

**Thanks be to the Father, the Son, and my new beta reader, Prince Harrington. She's the most wonderful, patient beta reader in the world, who bats away all my writing insecurities. Check out her stuff, too!**

**The title of this chapter is a lyric from "Ceremony" by New Order. Amin n'uma tessa ta, especially Bully.**

**5:38 p.m.- October 31, 2007**

I twisted Beatrice's lipstick up and down in the tube, contemplating whether or not to risk borrowing it.

My hunt for a costume had been unfruitful. I'd pulled my entire drawer out of the wardrobe and dumped its contents onto my bed. I unfolded, refolded, and folded again; after a while, I fell onto a heap of dirty t-shirts and deflated. I idly fiddled with a torn seam in my jeans, searching for a new objective, when my eyes locked onto-

"Beatrice?" She was upside down from my new perspective.

"_Yes?_" She stabbed the dot onto an "I" and then slapped her pencil down onto the desk. She was doing homework at 5:00 on Halloween night, and I hadn't fully come to terms with the humanity of it.

"Oh, nothing." She turned to glare at me as I fiddled with her makeup. She was easily provoked tonight, and the lack of a challenge sapped the fun out of goading her.

It got quiet for a few minutes while I watched bugs crawling around in the light bulb cover. My reverie was only broken when phone chirped exhaustedly. I checked the time as I plugged it in. It was 5:42. Petey would be waiting.

"Beatrice?"

"Melanie." She cleared her throat. "I'm not sure if you remember the conversation we had a few minutes ago, but this is a very-"

"Important essay for your very important class for your very important education. I remember. Why don't you go to library?"

She _had_ asked me to be quiet immediately upon entering the room; she was particularly touchy tonight, and it made me want to poke at her. She'd gotten all weird and tight-lipped when I'd mentioned the party, and hadn't been very keen on my sense of humor since. Not that she ever was, but she wasn't usually this uppity until about fifteen minutes in.

"We discussed that, too. The library is closed on nationally observed holidays and Passover. I thought you were leaving for that absurd party, anyway." She sniffed.

I rolled my eyes at her, accidentally digging my finger into a pat of her eyeshadow in the process. I made it to the bathroom and tossed it into a drawer before she noticed. I decided against using Beatrice's makeup- particularly because she'd (reluctantly) agreed to let me borrow her bike- and summoned my trusty black eyeliner from the depths of a bathroom drawer. I quickly brushed my hair and made sure my bangs were straight with Beatrice's brush, then meticulously cleaned every strand out when I was done. My hair was a lighter shade of blonde than Beatrice's, and she'd bitch at me until it had grown an inch if she realized that I'd used her stupid hairbrush. _"Parasites and head lice"_. I scratched a subconscious tingle at the nape of my neck. Parasites and head lice indeed.

I was pulling faces at myself in the mirror in a final attempt to conjure a costume out of thin air, when an idea hit me.

"Bea-"

"Melanie?" She'd cut me off, and she sounded angry.

She was more observant that I'd thought. I made sure that no eyeshadow had flaked off around the sink before cautiously peeking out of the bathroom.

"Yeeeah?"

My stomach dropped. She held my bag in one hand, and turned a battered pack of cigarettes over in the other.

"What are you doing?" I could feel an edge in my voice in my throat. I stepped across the room to snatch my bag from her and reached for the cigarettes, but held them over my head. "What are these, Melanie?"

"They're cigarettes, _Beatrice,_" I jumped for the carton, but she backed away. My anger spiked exponentially. "Give them to me. Why were you looking through my bag, you fucking snoop?"

She balked at the F-word. "They were sticking out of the front. You know that this is a chemical free dorm," she said, her voice shaking, as though she were close to tears. "I'm- I'm going to have to report you to Ms. Peabody!"

"Goddammit, Beatrice, don't be a narc!"

She started to tear up. "I'm _not_ a narc!" She reacted to the phrase as though I'd burned her with a cattle prod.

I finally got the cigarettes off of her. She crossed her arms and moved to the corner of the room to wipe fog away from her lenses.

"I'm _not_ a narc." She repeated the phrase quietly as I turned to leave.

"Good to know."

"You're not still going to that stupid party, are you?" She took a few steps toward me.

"What's my alternative? Shacking up with you?"

"There's going to be alcohol there, you know. They always get busted. Always."

"What, are you gonna call the cops? Just leave it, Beatrice."

"But- you- you _can't-_"

"I've got a date waiting. I'll see you later." I felt her eyes on me as I shoved my cigarettes into my pocket. I grabbed my phone as an afterthought. She began a series of outraged squeaks, continuing unintelligibly until her clucking broke into words.

"They all laugh at you, you know." Her voice cracked. "Sneaking out of the attic when you think no one's awake... then showing up to morning class, wearing the same thing as yesterday..." she stopped when she saw that I'd frozen in the doorway.

"What do they say?" though I felt her answer before she spoke.

"They say that you're a _whore_."

A laugh caught in my throat. The accuracy with which I'd been able to predict her response had been almost occult.

I pulled the door open at that. I'd broken into a stride when I heard Beatrice following me.

"Melanie-"

"Fuck _right_ off, Beatrice."

"I'm sorry. I'm _sorry_. I didn't mean it!"

"What did you mean then?"

"Nothing, I-" She grabbed my sleeve and yanked me backward.

"Let. Go." I bit each syllable.

"Listen to me-"

"Beatrice, let go! You're jealous, or upset, or something- I don't give a shit. You're just some sad cow who doesn't want to be alone-"

I pulled my arm out of her grasp, and everything seemed to slow down.

_"Doesn't want to be alone."_

Her glasses slipped off of her tearstained face as she tumbled backward. She landed on them, and I heard the frame crack. I backed away from her, shaking. A few partially painted faces and half-dressed bodies peered from other doorways, though any attention I paid them was fleeting. Beatrice's chest heaved, and the usual ruddiness of her spotty cheeks was spreading to the rest of her face. Her flannel nightgown had ridden up over her hips, and she quickly covered herself, though even the fastest hands would've been too late; laughter bubbled up from the sidelines, singing us both.

"I hate you." Her features flattened. Her lips had barely moved.

"I'm so sorry, Beatrice."

"I _hate_ you." She opened her eyes, and I suddenly understood how utterly sincere she had been.

She snatched her glasses from the floor and whipped back into the room, slamming the door behind her.

The pink walls seemed to be drawing slowly together as I jogged down the stairs. It was quiet. The dorm was almost completely empty, and the interest of the others had quickly waned when they realized that they'd missed the bulk of the fight, which seemed to be a monumental disservice to Beatrice's anger. Her words lingered at the back of my neck and seemed to rake down the hallway.

The building seemed ready to collapse under the weight in my chest until I pushed through the front doors and saw Petey waiting for me on the bottom of the steps, the sight of which was almost startling enough to make me laugh.

He was dressed what appeared to be a pink bunny suit with his hand on his chin, glumly- but patiently- waiting for me.

"What took you so long?" His calm, deep voice was almost shocking in contrast to the anger that was still buzzing in my mind.

He looked appropriately startled at my bloodshot eyes.

"Are you okay?" he asked nervously.

"No."

"Um..."

"We don't have to talk about it, Petey."

"Oh. Okay," he sounded relieved, but followed with the expected, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Thanks." Predictable, boring old Petey. I sniffed away a few renegade tears. I think they were scaring him.

"What a courageous choice of costume. Very "Donnie Darko". There's not a history of psychosis in your family, is there?"

He stood and pulled the hood on. One ear flopped over lackadaisically, and I couldn't help but notice his hairy ankles; the suit's legs were about three inches too short for him.

"I don't think so. Well, my dad's a librarian. There has to be at least a little masochism there."

I laughed, and he looked pleased with himself. "Where's your costume, anyway?"

I remembered what I was going to tell Beatrice before she'd found the cigarettes. My nostrils flared, but I was surprised at how even my voice was as I explained my stroke of genius.

"I'm a serial killer." He squinted his eyes in confusion. "You can never tell, can you?"

"Oh." He paused, and then chuckled. "You're clever. Lazy, but clever."

"So I've been told."

I walked over to return Beatrice's bike lock. I was pretty sure it would have been considered theft to borrow it now. I hugged myself through my sweater as I stepped back over to Pete.

"Hey, you think Lola will like my suit?" he grinned stupidly.

"Not unless your ears are full of Jaegermeister."

"Jesus, Mel." He shoved me playfully. I punched him back, and he threw has hands up in defeat. I slid my arm through his as he rubbed his bicep. The streetlights flickered on just as we pushed through the heavy gates.


End file.
